More on Northamptonshire prescription cutbacks

I’ve posted before about this – Northamptonshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) has stopped doctors from prescribing most gluten-free products, including pasta.

Now the Daventry Express has picked up on the case of Kelly Muckelberg, who has coeliac disease, and used to be prescribed bread, pasta, flour, pizza bases and crackers. Now she can only get bread and flour.

So what, you might think, why should she get free food? (Because Kelly is a single mum on income support, she doesn’t have to pay for prescriptions – like my daughter, though hers are free because she is a child).

But consider this – a bag of gluten free pasta at a shop near where Kelly lives costs £3.20, according to the Daventry Express, but a bag of normal pasta costs 31p.

Does that seem fair? Kelly used to make a spag Bol once a week, but now can’t afford to. Pasta isn’t one of the UK’s traditional staples, but has become one over the last few decades.

If Kelly eats gluten, she will get stomach pain, and possibly vomiting and diarrhoea as well (I don’t know how she reacts to gluten, so this may vary), general ‘unwellness’ and brain fog (inability to concentrate). Long term, eating gluten could lead to cancer, infertility and osteoporosis, as well as other diseases due to malnourishment.